Attitude Estimation of H2A Rocket Body from Light Curve Measurements.

Vananti, Alessandro; Lu, Yao; Schildknecht, Thomas (2023). Attitude Estimation of H2A Rocket Body from Light Curve Measurements. International Journal of Astrophysics and Space Science, 11(2), pp. 15-22. Science Publishing Group 10.11648/j.ijass.20231102.11

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The knowledge of the attitude motion of space debris is relevant for active debris removal missions. One
possibility to characterize the attitude of space objects consists in the acquisition of photometric measurements over time,
called light curves. The observed object is illuminated by the Sun and the variation of its apparent brightness gives information
about its attitude state, e.g. whether the object is tumbling or not. If the light curve indicates a clear periodic variation it can be
assumed that the object is rotating around its own axis with approximately constant angular velocity. However, often the
orientation of the spin axis in body-fixed and inertial frame is unknown and its determination is challenging. Depending on the
observed object and the information available about its shape, surface, components, a limited number of methods exists to
determine the spin axis orientation. In this article we focus the attitude analysis on the Japanese H2A upper stage. Several light
curves of this type of rocket body exhibit specific peaks, which can be exploited to extract attitude information. We assume
that the peaks are related to the specular reflection occurring on the conical part of the upper stage. We present a novel method
to estimate the direction of the rotation axis from the position of these peaks.

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